1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an interpretation support system for evaluating interpretation reports of medical images and for transmitting said evaluations to a predetermined address.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, medical diagnostic apparatuses have been used to collect information about the inside of a subject and convert the inside of the subject into an image according to the collected information to create a medical image. Examples of such medical diagnostic apparatuses include ultrasonic diagnostic apparatuses, X-ray apparatuses, MRI apparatuses (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging diagnostic apparatuses), and PET apparatuses (nuclear medicine diagnostic apparatuses).
Additionally, there are also image servers for storing the medical images created by such medical diagnostic apparatuses. There are also report servers that allow radiologists to retrieve a medical image from said image server, display the medical image, perform interpretation of the medical image through measurements and analysis, create an interpretation report, and then record the report in association with the corresponding medical image.
The interpretation support system comprises the abovementioned image server and report server and other parts. A medical image as referred to herein is one that conforms to standards such as DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) and that includes supplementary information such as patient information along with image information.
A physician who makes a request to a radiologist for interpretation (hereinafter referred to as “requesting physician”) refers to the interpretation report for a specific patient created by the radiologist along with the corresponding medical image and also uses other information about said patient, such as interview results, to comprehensively judge the medical image and conduct diagnosis of said patient.
Conventional systems have been proposed to transmit an evaluation of an interpretation report to an interpretation center, in order to select a radiologist suited to the details of the examination, in consideration of status information and qualitative evaluations of the radiologists (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-268075).
Conventional interpretation support systems for medical images are capable of conducting diagnoses efficiently by referring to an interpretation report if using an interpretation report system or referring to comments and annotations such as arrows attached to the medical image if no interpretation report system is being used. However, even in a system that comprises such an interpretation report system, the requesting physician does not provide the radiologist with any evaluation of, for example, the usefulness of the interpretation of the medical image being used. In this case, if the radiologist wishes to check the quality of their own interpretation to help improve the quality of future interpretations, they would have to ask the relevant requesting physician or other party about their evaluation of the medical image. Therefore, it has been difficult in the prior art for a radiologist to receive evaluations of their own interpretations with only the medical image.